Tag Archives: musing

During our China trip, we noticed many peculiar things about China. Some are similar to what we see here in Jakarta, others are different, and more dramatic.

These are our findings, let us know what you think. To read 5 Peculiar things about Jakarta, click here.

1. Can a 6 floor tall building collapse overnight? Yes, it can, in China

We were in Hangzhou when this happened. And ‘horrified’ will be an understatement of what we felt.

It was one early crispy winter morning, we had just woke up in our nice hotel in Hangzhou, China. All was fancy and lovely. Then we turned on the TV, and saw this:

OMG, a residential building in Ningbao, a city near Hangzhou where we stayed, had just collapsed. A 6 floor tall building built in about 1987? Only 20 odd years old, and it collapsed, right before our eyes on the TV screen!

It was like 911 happening right in front of us. What happened to the people living inside?

Midnight Visitor

Ausable did not fit any description of a secret agent Fowler had ever read. Following him down the musty corridor of the gloomy French hotel where Ausable had a room, Fowler felt let down. It was a small room, on the sixth and top floor, and scarcely a setting for a romantic adventure.Ausable was, for one thing, fat. Very fat. And then there was his accent. Though he spoke French and German passably, he had never altogether lost the American accent he had brought to Paris from Boston twenty years ago.“You are disappointed,” Ausable said wheezily over his shoulder.

“You were told that I was a secret agent, a spy, dealing in espionage and danger. You wished to meet me because you are a writer, young and romantic. You envisioned mysterious figures in the night, the crack of pistols, drugs in the wine.”

“Instead, you have spent a dull evening in a French music hall with a sloppy fat man who, instead of having messages slipped into his hand by dark-eyed beauties, gets only a prosaic telephone call making an appointment in his room. You have been bored!” The fat man chuckled to himself as he unlocked the door of his room and stood aside to let his frustrated guest enter.

“You are disillusioned,” Ausable told him. “But take cheer, my young friend. Presently you will see a paper, a quite important paper for which several men and women have risked their lives, come to me.

Some day soon that paper may well affect the course of history. In that thought is drama, is there not?”

As he spoke, Ausable closed the door behind him. Then he switched on the light.

And as the light came on, Fowler had his first authentic thrill of the day. For halfway across the room, a small automatic pistol in his hand, stood a man.

Ausable blinked a few times.

“Max,” he wheezed, “you gave me quite a start. I thought you were in Berlin. What are you doing here in my room?”

Max was slender, a little less than tall, with features that suggested slightly the crafty, pointed countenance of a fox. There was about him — aside from the gun — nothing especially menacing.

“The report,” he murmured. “The report that is being brought to you tonight concerning some new missiles. I thought I would take it from you. It will be safer in my hands than in yours.”

Ausable moved to an armchair and sat down heavily. “I’m going to raise the devil with the management this time, and you can bet on it,” he said grimly. “This is the second time in a month that somebody has got into my room through that nuisance of a balcony!” Fowler’s eyes went to the single window of the room. It was an ordinary window, against which now the night was pressing blackly.

“Balcony?” Max said, with a rising inflection. “No, a passkey. I did not know about the balcony. It might have saved me some trouble had I known.”

“It’s not my balcony,” Ausable said with extreme irritation. “It belongs to the next apartment.” He glanced explanatorily at Fowler. “You see,” he said, “this room used to be part of a large unit, and the next room — through that door there — used to be the living room. It had the balcony, which extends under my window now. You can get onto it from the empty room two doors down — and somebody did, last month. The management promised to block it off. But they haven’t.”

Max glanced at Fowler, who was standing stiffly not far from Ausable, and waved the gun with a commanding gesture. “Please sit down,” he said. “We have a wait of half an hour, I think.”

“Thirty-one minutes,” Ausable said moodily. “The appointment was for twelve-thirty. I wish I knew how you learned about the report, Max.”

The little spy smiled evilly. “And we wish we knew how your people got the report. But no harm has been done. I will get it back tonight. What is that? Who is at the door?”

Fowler jumped at the sudden knocking at the door. Ausable just smiled. “That will be the police,” he said. “I thought that such an important paper as the one we are waiting for should have a little extra protection. I told them to check on me to make sure everything was all right.”

Max bit his lip nervously. The knocking was repeated.

“What will you do now, Max?” Ausable asked. “If I do not answer the door, they will enter anyway. The door is unlocked. And they will not hesitate to shoot.”

Max’s face was black with anger as he backed swiftly towards the window. He swung a leg over the sill. “Send them away!” he warned. “I will wait on the balcony. Send them away or I’ll shoot and take my chances!”

The knocking at the door became louder and a voice was raised.

“Mr Ausable! Mr Ausable!”

Keeping his body twisted so that his gun still covered the fat man and his guest, the man at the window grasped the frame with his free hand to support himself. Then he swung his other leg up and over the window-sill.

The doorknob turned. Swiftly Max pushed with his left hand to free himself from the sill and drop to the balcony. And then, as he dropped, he screamed once, shrilly.

The door opened and a waiter stood there with a tray, a bottle and two glasses. “Here is the drink you ordered for when you returned,” he said, and set the tray on the table, deftly uncorked the bottle, and left the room.

We have only got till next Tuesday before the world is going to end. Scary stuff. Angles, arrows, guns? Which one to pick? Who to believe? Does anyone know the Mayas? How reliable these ancient people are?

Whatever will happen, we are going to stop blogging and spend all the remaining precious time with our family and loved ones. Actually we will be on a flight to Sydney as soon as Mr. D finishes his work on Friday. 😀

How about you? Is there anything on your mind that you must do before the end of the world?

We know, we have just published our Christmas wishes this week. But we can’t wait any longer, we are gonna publish the D’s Bucket List right now, until it’s too late.

So here is D’s bucket list:

Skating in Antarctic with dogs

Safari in Africa

Check out the Caribbeans

Go to New York and a few other metropolitan cities

Diving at Ko Phi Phi

Meet the Pharaohs in Egypt

……………………………………………………………..

OK, this list is already too long, hope you have got the drill by now…

We have got an around the world flight to catch.

To complete these trips in less than a week, aren’t we ambitious?!

Last but not least, while we are on the airplane, we will eat all the chocolate we can possibly eat. No time to be wasted. Not until next Tuesday.

Mrs. D got really frustrated in the car stuck in the traffic on her way home after a lovely lunch in Pacific Place (a fancy shopping mall in central Jakarta). All the happiness from earlier of the day was slowly winding away.

She’s got a kid to take out of school and she was running late. There was nothing she can do, not even with a driver who knows all the short-cuts in South Jakarta. She was rather anxious. She really didn’t want to be late.

Sigh…

Until she saw this man:

A rubbish man braving the wind and rain, treading in the flood, and just kept on going.

What’s going through his mind? Was he frustrated like us?

We would never know.

Unlike Paris Hilton, Mrs. D would never stop her car and talk to a total stranger. Not in circumstances like this. Everyone has his own dignity. Who are we to judge? After all, it was not a street beggar she had seen.

Anyway, Mrs. D was much calmer and relaxed after this. No way she was going to turn herself into a banker’s wife, that’s Mr. D’s job. 😀

Sorry to deviate from our normal Jakarta news. But what news can be greater than a Royal baby news this Christmas?! To say we are excited is an understatement. Any baby gets us excited, let alone a Royal baby! This is the best Christmas ever. Let’s celebrate!

Congratulations Kate and Will! Well done!

Now that the Royal baby is on the way, what about baby names? Oh, we love naming babies. The next 9 months will be spent on picking the best baby name for our Royal baby. Free entertainment. 😀

What about baby clothing? We love to buy cute clothes for new born babies. A batik dress for a royal baby girl, or a batik shirt for a royal baby boy? Oh, imaginations, ours are running wild…

For now, we will stick to our Christmas red. A red dress if we have a princess.

What if we have a prince? Well, we will have to do a prince outfit soon, don’t we? Stay tuned. 😀

How about you? Any baby names you like? Any baby clothes you gonna design? Good luck. See who’s the winner in 9 months time.

Here we go again. Can anyone tell us how this photo of ours have anything to do with the term:

Well, obviously, Google thinks this picture has everything to do with the term ‘medical assistant office outfits girls’ . In fact, this photo not only has everything to do with ‘medical assistant office outfits girls’, it is also one of the best photos for ‘medical assistant office outfits girls’.

Why?

Because out of hundreds of millions of photos for ‘medical assistant office outfits girls’ , this photo of ours is ranked on the 5th page on Google image search. That’s like ranking the top 0.00001% out of Google pictures for this search term.

How cool is that!

Actually this is not our best photo yet, check the other photo of ours.

Look familiar? Well, this one has ranked on Google image search page No. 2 for ‘medical assistant office outfits girls’. Wow, now that Google mentioned it, she sure does look like a medical assistant to us. Cosplay in bright day light in a crowded Jakarta shopping mall. Is that even legal? What do you think?

We are really impressed by the genius behind the Google search team by now. They must have held double PhD degrees for what they are doing.Don’t believe your eyes? Why not Google yourself. 😀

Next time if you want to cheat on Google, just throw in some random pictures and put a nice title to it. You might hit your jackpot too. Google is an easier lover, he will be contented with just that.

Oh, we also like the photo below for our beloved search term ‘medical assistant office outfits girls’. This one ranks very well on Google image search. You can find it on Google search page 2, very close to our second photo above.

We have just reinforced that MidnightVisitor is a family blog, and we are quite sensible in not showing any not kids friendly stuff here. The next thing we know, we have landed ourselves in hot water, again.

How does this happen?

Well, after a day’s hard work, we are enjoying our peace and quiet and doing a bit maintenance on our blog. Guess what we found? Some strangers have landed on our blog via this:

If you not already know, this is a screen shoot of who’s who in the blog sphere. Basically it tells you how people find you using what search terms. Amazingly, someone found us through the term ‘best hot woman in a swimming pool’, among our Christmas lyrics and Christmas ornament and crafts.

How did this happen?

Being curious souls like us, we frantically put the term on Google. We love Google, right? Google sure will not fail us.

Guess we are wrong, yet again.

We searched and searched, but among the millions of pictures shown up, we cannot find anything that belongs to us.

To love, or not to love, that is the question. Now we are utterly destroyed. Our hearts are broken. If we can’t trust Google, who else can we trust?!

Since we are heart broken, we need to see a doctor. But, it’s already too late here in Jakarta. What to do?

We love jokes and we believe laughter is the best medicine. So instead of finding our ‘best hot woman in the swimming pool’, we have found someone else’s hot lady: in the swimming pool and naked, via our great trusty friend Google:

Don’t believe your eyes? Why not Google yourself? Put in our title for this article, and see how you fare. Google might as well surprise you. You might have some pool side fun along the way. You never know…

31 Days In Jakarta Day 26

OK, it’s still early in the morning, maybe we shouldn’t ask. But we really want to know so we ask anyway. Do you care for some lamb tonight?

Lamb chop, Lamb shoulder, Lamb leg.

Lamb satay, Lamb steak, Lamb meatball.

Lamb soup, Lamb stew, Lamb roast.

Spicy Lamb, Curry Lamb, Herby Lamb;

Greek Lamb, Italian Lamb, Moroccan Lamb.

Lamb with potatoes, Lamb with carrots, Lamb with apricots.

The choices are endless.

Why do we ask? Because if we wanted to, we can buy a whole living, breathing, kicking, and screaming lamb from the Jakarta street. Today!

When driving around Jakarta, we noticed more and more lambs recently. People are selling them for Eid Al Adha (The Feast of sacrifice).

Want to buy some lambs? Come to Jakarta. This is the right place. You can afford it. For USD 100 you can buy a small lamb. OK, since we are nice and we have known you for some time now, how about USD 90, special, only for you? 10% discount, that’s what friends are. 😀

Too small, OK, how about a bigger lamb? For USD 300 you can have a big lamb. As usual we will throw in the 10% discount, special, only for you!

Today is a public holiday here in Jakarta. We will be enjoying our free time and have some lamb for dinner. How about you?

31 Days In Jakarta Day 12

This makes us think about our older guard, Abadi. He is quite special.

Abadi is a very happy Indonesia young man, about 1.8m tall, and is full of energy. He worked for us for about a year. Then one day he left.

‘Is he finding a new job?’ We asked our driver.

‘No, Abadi is going to be a businessman.’ replied our driver.

Ok, Abadi is young, tall, dark and handsome (now we regret we didn’t took a photo of him). But he is only a guard, how on earth can he do business?

(Indonesian Guards, who always smile)

Turns out Abadi is going to sell coconuts in Jogjakarta. Obviously it is a big business there. In fact, everyone drinks coconut in Indonesia. We like it, too.

Besides, Abadi’s uncle knew people in the coconut business in Jogjakarta. That’s what makes all the difference. ‘Relationship’ is the key in Indonesia, if you don’t already know.

And even better, Abadi is not selling coconuts in the streets. No way. He is going to be a wholesaler. He will be the provider of the coconuts to all the small coconut stalls, similar to the ones we see while we drive across Jakarta.

Now, that sound more exciting.

So whenever we drive pass a coconut stall like this, our minds will start to think, think about Abadi, that tall, dark, handsome young guard of ours.

Good luck, Abadi.

p.s Abadi means ‘A Long Life or eternity’ in Indonesia language. We really wish that holds true for our guard Abadi.

31 Days in Jakarta Day 12

Ok, this is a long title. But are you curious to know what Jakarta’s construction workers do while building a mansion like this:

Jakarta’s mansion can be huge. It is not our common 3 bedroom houses in Sydney. It sure takes forever to build, right?

The other day, Mrs D and Miss D took a morning walk. They walked inside a Golf Course Residence. The road there was leafy, wide and very quiet. A beautiful place. Many expats took morning walks there.

Then Miss D noticed a rooster, a happy, shiny, beautiful rooster.

Mrs D was curious, what was the rooster doing in a place like this? Was it someone’s pet?

Turned out the rooster was crossing the road.

The rooster crossed the road, then there, another rooster appeared.

There were actually many more roasters, hens, and chicks at this side of the road. They all started scurrying away because Miss D was now getting excited and started to follow them.

They arrived at this door, and one by one, the chicks went inside, the hens went inside…

Finally, the proud rooster went inside.

We had a look around, and found that this was a building site for a new mansion. It was all fenced up, so we cannot see much of the building itself. But obviously, someone was raising these chickens while building the mansion.

Not a bad idea, right?

We were really curious, and checked around and then we saw the place next to the building where the garden or pool supposed to be. We saw lots of corns, grew tall and proud. Aha, they were not only raise chickens, they were also planting plants. Maybe veggies, too? Self sustained with eggs, chicken meat, food and veggie. How green was that?! Who said Jakarta only got pollution, people here can be creative, too!

We stared at that empty door where the chickens went in. There were some good, hard working people living inside for sure. Next time, if we build our house in Sydney, we might raise some chickens as well? What do you think?

31 Days In Jakarta Day 6

Want to be a millionaire? Come to Jakarta then. Trust us, you’ll become a millionaire, as soon as you landed at the SOEKARNO airport!

We were confused by the money in Jakarta when we first arrived in Jakarta (Actually, we had quite a lot of confusions when we were first here, not only the money side, though).

One day, Mrs D took a taxi and at the end of her trip, she had to pay the fare. So out she grabbed her purse, and then she got confused.

Which note to give the driver?

She knew how much to pay thanks to the meter. But all those zeros and numbers, oh boy, she felt dizzy.

Thanks to all these confusion, Mrs D ended up gave more than needed to the driver and made him one happy man. In fact the local people here are living a hard life and is short on cash, so give generously while we can.

Oh, and the feeling of an Instant Millionaire. Don’t you just love it?

31 Days In Jakarta Day 5

(Miss D is a brilliant writer and she contributes to this blog every now and then. No, we do not pay her to do so, if you ask. She does it for the fun of it. So here she goes. Happy reading!)

Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you enjoy my first post on MidNightVisitor. There will be many more to come. I am looking forward to meeting you here.

During our stay in Jakarta, the D family has found lots of peculiar things. And here’s a list of them…

1) There are no dishwashers!

No matter how hard we tried, we can’t find any dishwashers! We tried every possible store we could find, but nothing. All there was, was washing machines, microwaves, vacuum machines, TVs… anything electronically possible. But no dishwashers! Now we regret not taking our dishwasher to Jakarta…

Why they don’t sell dishwashers in Jakarta? Well, we figured out but that’s just us. Do you know?

2) No lawn mowers!

Do you know what people use to cut the grass? Scissors! Yes scissors. Or any hacking tool in this case. Just take a knife from the kitchen and hack away!

(Gardener with edge trimmer)

Occasionally, we do see gardeners use Edge Trimmers, but guess what, they use that to mow the entire lawn, not just the edges!

3) No toilet paper! (Eww…)

Well, of course in the shopping malls there is toilet paper, but in more local places or sometimes in tourist areas, THERE IS NO TOILET PAPER! And further, you have to pay Rp 1000 (about US 10 cents) just to pee!

4) No bus stops!

Well, this isn’t actually true… Technically, there are bus stops, and proper ones too. But sometimes people are just running a little late or need to catch a ride, so… the bus stops in the middle of the road! In fact the bus drivers welcome people to catch the buses in the middle of the road (mainly to earn the ticket fare)!

Absurd, right?

(Jakarta bus, the door is always open, and it stops in the middle of the road whenever someone wants to take a ride)

If you think this is absurd, then wait till you see all the vendors with their toys, water bottles, newspapers, magazines, snacks amid all these traffic chaos.

Yes, here in Jakarta people inside their cars can stop and buy from these vendors while waiting for traffic lights. What a wonderful service!

(Accessories seller on Jakarta street)

(Man selling snacks in middle of Jakarta road)

5) Jumpers and Jackets

You might think, 30 degrees, who would want to wear a coat? Wrong. In Jakarta the average temperature is around 30 degrees (all year round). And people still wear coats!

Hmm… interesting, would you wear a winter coat in 30 degrees weather?

(Motorist in brown winter coat in 30 degree sun)

(Family of 4 on one motorbike, this is quite normal here.)

(Motorist with mask, also normal street scene)

There are heaps more fascinating things about Jakarta. Perhaps one day, we might increase this list. Stay tuned.

What is interesting about your country or city? We would love to know! Just send in a short comment or email. Thx. Miss D 😀